Formal Letter to SE about RMT situation.

[Caiera]

As soon as one of these messages comes up, I just right click and black list straight away, it is annoying though

[Zabuza]

Best to look at reddit for the answer. Just type in guildworks in search on the ffxiv reddit.

Sorry to tell you that in such a roundabout way but again, noone can admit they have it installed if they do. Probably can't link you any of the sites either lol. Sorry.

As soon as one of these messages comes up, I just right click and black list straight away, it is annoying though

That's fine until your blacklist gets full, then it becomes even more annoying.

[AlphaFox]

Thing is you can blacklist all day long and you will not do anything but annoy yourself. You block one, two more pop up and just when you think you finally have it done, boom, 3 more. Then again, I guess they don't really care, even if they are being banned I can only assume people are taking advantage of the gil bots that encourage them to keep buying the game over and thus injecting more money into the company. I don't know how they work but this is my view of it >.>

[KisaiTenshi]

I actually still have the chimes going on tells cause i just like the sound of it lol. I know i'm weird but yea it actually doesn't bother me in fact I kinda am used to hearing it every once in awhile.

I turned the chimes off and turned the Party/Alliance chimes on, and in most cases I regret the Alliance chimes because people are sometimes worse at spamming that with ascii art.

But the thing is, when people try to directly message me, I always miss it because the chime is off.

[Caiera]

That's fine until your blacklist gets full, then it becomes even more annoying.

Yeah I know what you mean, I've been playing since 2.0 launch and have got around 9 blacklisted in total on Masamune, approx 40 on Behemoth, 30 odd on leviathan, etc, etc, I can clearly remember one day while on Behemoth, I blacklisted about 23 in the space of 2 hours which was driving me up the wall at the time as I couldn't play the game in peace.
So I am all for putting a stop to it, but in reality, nothing appears to be getting done as they seem to get back in the game as soon as they are banned using a different account but with similar names like sfgdsfgrd, it's infuriating and hilarious at the same time.

[Nadirah]

One of the biggest rmt sites is actually out of Canada.

[aesteval]

Yesterday I had a friend request from a RMT while I was still on the loading screen. Before I even had control of my character, before I could see into the room at the Inn, before I could type in /busy, controller goes CHIME and I load in with a friend request from some BS URL cheap gil random letters.

And the game could use two modes for /busy: one mode that blocks off requests from everyone and another that lets requests in from confirmed friends. If we /busy we can't invite each other to party, if we invite each other to party it comes with RMT spam.

[Niwashi]

P.S. I've added a list of suggestions that people have compiled to the OP so that people no longer have to sift through 100+ pages. It is simply a list made by others throughout the thread, signing the petition does not mean you endorse these methods, only the ones listed in my original letter. If anyone has any method that I have missed, let me know.

A few more:

• Option settings for whether to allow Friend requests, FC invites, party invites, etc.
• Throttling the rate at which /tell messages can be sent.
• Give the "viewing cutscene" status the same effects as "busy" status, e.g. no /tell messages, Friend requests, etc.
• Modified versions of /busy (e.g. blocking /tell while allowing party invites, or blocking strangers but allowing friends)

But the biggest thing they most need is a combination of #1 on your list, right-click reporting, with a 24/7 staff of GMs monitoring those reports and doing the bans real-time rather than a few weeks later. (If the bots last long enough to be profitable before getting banned, then banning doesn't work. They just get replaced. Immediate bans as soon as they first begin their spam attacks would stop it, since they wouldn't be profitable enough to be worth replacing.)

[Zabuza]

A few more:

• Option settings for whether to allow Friend requests, FC invites, party invites, etc.
• Throttling the rate at which /tell messages can be sent.
• Give the "viewing cutscene" status the same effects as "busy" status, e.g. no /tell messages, Friend requests, etc.
• Modified versions of /busy (e.g. blocking /tell while allowing party invites)

But the biggest thing they most need is a combination of #1 on your list, right-click reporting, with a 24/7 staff of GMs monitoring those reports and doing the bans real-time rather than a few weeks later. (If the bots last long enough to be profitable before getting banned, then banning doesn't work. They just get replaced. Immediate bans as soon as they first begin their spam attacks would stop it, since they wouldn't be profitable enough to be worth replacing.)

I really like the cutscene suggestion. Added all of them to the list.

[Magusrex]

This seems to be a complete waste of our time, although we have learned some things.

SE cares so little about the people who are being harassed that they will not even acknowledge us.
SE is very unlikely to do anything new in an attempt to fix the issue as past behavior is a good indicator of future performance.
The people responsible for stopping the RMT are grossly incompetent compared to those who do it for other games.
The problem is not getting better

The only reasonable conclusion is that SE is benefitting from our continued harassment in some way and we can expect continued silence and weekly reports of ineffective bannings.